The Case of John Walker Lindh

The parents of John Walker Lindh publicly pleaded on Wednesday for President Bush to pardon their son, whom the United States government took into custody in December 2001 in Afghanistan.

In February 2002, after months of secret interrogation without a lawyer, Lindh was indicted on ten terrorism-related charges. Nine of the charges were ultimately dropped, and Lindh cut a deal that reduced his sentence to twenty years.

Today, the government continues to regard Lindh as an enemy of the state who poses a serious danger to national security. Lindh is therefore covered by Special Administrative Measures, which prohibit him from speaking to the media. Bryan Sierra, a Justice Department spokesman, declined “to discuss the legal basis” for this decision, but noted that “such measures are intended to monitor activity in the most dangerous cases, to prevent them from plotting violent acts.”

With this gag order in effect, and with many documents in the case still classified, much remains unknown about why the prosecution collapsed. Fragments of this story, however, have lately begun to emerge. Lindh’s own words have surfaced in the form of notes taken during lengthy conversations with him by people involved in preparing his defense. In addition, a former Justice Department lawyer who is troubled by the government’s handling of the case has decided to speak out.

Rohan Gunaratna, a respected terrorism scholar from Sri Lanka, interviewed Lindh for more than eight hours last summer in Alexandria. Gunaratna, who is affiliated with the University of St. Andrews, in Scotland, is the author of six books, including the recent “Inside Al Qaeda.” A short, compactly built man with a friendly, wide face, Gunaratna met with me recently in Manhattan. He said that he had been wary when Lindh’s defense lawyers first approached him about serving as an expert witness. He warned them that he believed that Lindh was almost certainly a member of Al Qaeda. The defense, undeterred, pressed him to meet the young suspect, and Gunaratna eventually agreed.

The encounter surprised him. “I have interviewed maybe two hundred terrorists over the past few years,” he told me, “and I am certain that John Walker Lindh has never been a terrorist, and never intended to be one.” Peering over his round spectacles for emphasis, he said, “A terrorist is a person who conducts attacks against civilian targets. John Walker Lindh never did that. He trained to fight in the Afghan Army, against other soldiers. He was not a member of Al Qaeda. He didn’t know much about Al Qaeda, and he was no exception. Dozens of others whom I’ve met who went to train and fight in Afghanistan also were not part of Al Qaeda.” He laughed. “It’s a secret organization.” Gunaratna believes that Lindh “presents no national-security threat. He’s been completely misrepresented to the American people.”

Lindh told another expert that he had fallen asleep when Bin Laden visited his camp, and told Gunaratna he didn’t care for Bin Laden—and turned down the chance at joining a suicide-attack mission:

Although the government accused Lindh of having conspired to kill Americans for Al Qaeda, he said he explicitly turned down an offer to get involved in unspecified “martyrdom operations” in foreign countries, including the United States and Israel. This invitation, Lindh told Gunaratna, took place toward the end of his training at Al Farooq, in an encounter with Abu Mohammad al-Masri, an Egyptian official at the camp. Al-Masri, who has since been identified as an Al Qaeda member, called Lindh into a room and asked him to sit down on the floor beside him.

“He asked me whether I’d like to do a martyrdom operation,” Lindh told Gunaratna. “I said, ‘No, I’m not interested in that.’ He said, ‘Would you be interested in a U.S. or Israeli target?’ I said, ‘I came to Afghanistan to fight against the Northern Alliance. I am not interested in fighting against other countries.’ ” Then, Lindh recalled, “The Egyptian said, ‘Whatever you do, do not tell other trainees about this private conversation.’ ”

Having discovered that anti-American operatives were being recruited in his midst, Lindh nonetheless remained with Al Ansar. Paul McNulty said that Lindh’s exchange with al-Masri showed that he had “made a conscious decision to do things that were connected to terrorism.”